This Bloomberg article notes that 106 hedge funds have withdrawn their registrations under the Advisers Act since the SEC’s rule requiring registration was struck down in Goldstein v. SEC. According to the article:
SEC spokesman John Heine said 70 hedge fund managers told the agency they opted out because registration is no longer required. The other 36 may have withdrawn for any number of reasons, such as closing down their funds, he said. Heine declined to name any of the hedge funds.
Interestingly,
[a] total 2,479 of the roughly 7,000 U.S.-based funds remain registered with the SEC and subject to spot-checks. Those that stay probably are doing so to attract pension plans and charitable foundations, which are more concerned with regulatory compliance, said Barry Barbash, a former director of the SEC’s investment-management division.
As an aside, the article notes that Amaranth did not register. It seems unlikely, however, that registration would have prevented the billions in trading losses. As Dale Oesterle notes in his recent paper “Regulating Hedge Funds,” “registration . . .does not require an adviser to follow or avoid any particular trading strategy, does not require or prohibit any specific investments, and does not require an adviser to reveal specific trading strategies or disclose their specific portfolio holdings.”
